We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal.

Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out.

the body is simple as a turtle / and straight as a dog: / the body cannot lie.

One trouble: to be a professional anything in the United States is to think of oneself as an expert and one's ideas as semisacred, and to treat others in a certain way - professionally.

Any life is lived in a particular time and place. Every life is impacted by the family's socio-economic circumstances, and, in later life, by the person's.

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.